Costly EDI replaced with Azure Logic Apps and Integration Services

Overview

Graham & Brown is the UK's leading wallpaper manufacturer, producing over 500 designs across wallpaper, paint, blinds, and wall art from their headquarters in Blackburn, Lancashire. A family-run business since 1946, the company supplies major UK and international retailers, requiring reliable EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) connectivity with a network of B2B trading partners.

Veriland Consulting replaced Graham & Brown's expensive legacy EDI system with a modern, cloud-native alternative built on Azure Logic Apps and Integration Services — dramatically reducing annual costs while improving the reliability, speed, and visibility of B2B trading partner communications.

The Challenge

Graham & Brown's EDI requirements were typical of a mid-market manufacturer supplying major retailers — purchase orders, invoices, advance shipping notices, and inventory updates needed to flow reliably between their systems and their trading partners. However, the cost of the incumbent solution was disproportionate to the value it delivered.

• Disproportionate licensing costs: The existing EDI platform carried high annual licensing and maintenance fees that were a significant line item in the IT budget — far exceeding what modern cloud-based alternatives would cost for the same transaction volumes.
• Rigid and inflexible: Adding new trading partners or modifying existing EDI maps required specialist consultancy from the vendor at significant cost, creating delays and dependencies.
• Limited integration options: The legacy platform had poor connectivity with modern systems, making it difficult to integrate EDI data with other business applications or cloud services.
• Black-box monitoring: Transaction visibility was limited, with failures often only discovered when a retailer reported a missing order acknowledgement or invoice.
• Vendor lock-in: The proprietary nature of the legacy system made it difficult to evaluate alternatives or negotiate better terms, creating an unhealthy commercial dependency.

Our Solution

Veriland designed and built a replacement EDI platform on Azure that matched the full functionality of the legacy system at a fraction of the cost.

Azure Logic Apps for EDI Processing

The core of the solution uses Azure Logic Apps to handle the receipt, validation, transformation, and dispatch of EDI documents. Each trading partner has a dedicated workflow that processes their specific document formats, applies business rules, and routes messages to the correct destination — whether that's Graham & Brown's ERP system or back to the trading partner.

Azure Integration Services

Azure Service Bus provides reliable message queuing between integration components, ensuring no messages are lost during processing. Azure API Management secures external-facing endpoints and provides usage analytics. Together with Logic Apps, these services form a complete integration suite that handles all B2B communication requirements.

EDI Standards Support

The platform supports EDIFACT and other EDI standards required by Graham & Brown's retail trading partners, with document type coverage including purchase orders (ORDERS), order confirmations (ORDRSP), advance shipping notices (DESADV), invoices (INVOIC), and inventory reports (INVRPT).

Real-Time Monitoring Dashboard

A monitoring dashboard provides real-time visibility into all EDI transactions — successful deliveries, pending messages, validation errors, and partner connectivity status. Automated alerts notify the operations team immediately when issues arise, replacing the previous reactive model.

Migration & Partner Cutover

Veriland executed a phased migration, cutting over trading partners in batches with parallel running to validate each connection before decommissioning the legacy link. This approach ensured zero disruption to retailer communications throughout the transition.

Key Results

The migration from the legacy EDI platform to Azure delivered significant financial and operational improvements.

• Dramatic cost reduction: Replacement of the expensive legacy EDI platform with a consumption-based Azure model delivered substantial annual savings — one of the primary motivations for the project.
• Full functional parity: All existing trading partner connections, document types, and business rules were replicated on the new platform with no loss of functionality.
• Self-service partner management: New trading partners can be onboarded by Veriland or Graham & Brown's own team using templated Logic App workflows, eliminating the vendor dependency and consultancy costs of the old platform.
• Real-time transaction visibility: A monitoring dashboard replaced the previous black-box approach, giving the operations team instant insight into all B2B message flows.
• Improved reliability: Azure's built-in redundancy and automatic retry capabilities deliver higher message delivery reliability than the legacy platform.
• No vendor lock-in: The solution is built entirely on Azure platform services, giving Graham & Brown full control over their integration infrastructure and commercial flexibility.
• Zero-disruption migration: Phased partner cutover with parallel running ensured that no retailer communications were interrupted during the transition.

Technology Stack

Graham & Brown's EDI platform is built entirely on Microsoft Azure, providing a cost-effective, scalable, and fully managed integration infrastructure.

Azure Logic Apps

Orchestrates all EDI workflows — document receipt, schema validation, transformation, business rule application, and routing to trading partners and internal systems.

Azure Service Bus

Reliable message queuing ensuring guaranteed delivery between integration components, with dead-letter handling for messages that require manual review.

Azure API Management

Secures external-facing integration endpoints with authentication, rate limiting, and usage analytics for trading partner connections.

Azure Monitor

Real-time monitoring, alerting, and diagnostics across all integration components, providing full visibility into EDI transaction health and performance.